Black Bra And Panties

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Current revision as of 16:24, 15 April 2012

You don't buy black lingerie unless you want someone to see it.

-- Bianca Stratford, 10 Things I Hate About You

In real life, black lingerie is very commonly worn, and people will not look at you funny for admitting you own it, even if it takes up half your underwear drawer. Can you imagine wearing a white bra under a black shirt, or even a dark-colored one? Since most tropers are young males, some clarification may be required. Basically, the problem is that fabric which appears perfectly opaque when it's not under any tension (i.e. the part of the shirt around the waist and neckline) can become remarkably transparent when stretched across the bustline. Wearing a bra that's white (or even beige) under such a shirt acts like a giant highlighter and looks ridiculous (not to mention tacky). To women, Black Bra and Panties are simply sensible, mostly chosen for practicality (although, of course, looks are still a factor). No ulterior motive is involved. Black looks awful under black if it's even a tiny bit transparent, though.

There is a Production Reason why hot white girls constantly wear Black Bra and Panties on television and films and whatever. That's because black underwear, on light skin, registers better on a camera than any other color on light skin. Put a white girl in any other color of underwear, and the underwear won't register as well. The same thing holds true for dark-skinned women wearing white underwear; the camera picks up the contrast and photographs it. True facts for you dateless nerds who've never done shots with bikini-clad women.

As Most Writers Are Male, black underwear is unleaded Fetish Fuel.

In TV-land, the sight of black lingerie is an instant alarm bell for bad news. If a woman is seen wearing it or admits to wearing it, she's The Vamp for sure; if someone else finds it snooping through her drawer, it's a sure sign she's desperate. What other women must wear as a substitute under their black clothing is never explained. Lingerie is Color Coded For Your Convenience, and as with most other things, black = bad.

This is just silly, of course. While not yet a Discredited Trope, it's actually the red underwear (especially lingerie) that you have to be careful around. Well, that and no underwear at all. The trope itself may stem from the simple fact that black lingerie is easier to both film and model. Light-colored fabrics (especially white) emphasize shadows and can create color balance and brightness/contrast problems -- not to mention their quirky ability to become transparent under harsh stage lighting. That said, we'd all rather assume that black undies are just plain sexier -- at the end of the day, it's more fun that way.

See also Fur Bikini, Seashell Bra, Bare Your Midriff, Sexy Coat Flashing, Panty Shot, I See London, and Lingerie Scene.

Examples

[edit] Anime and Manga

• Subverted with Fate Testarossa, who wears this after she's grown up in the third season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Merely a reminder of her Dark Magical Girl past, she's one of the most motherly characters in the show now.
• Lelouch from Code Geass, with his obsession for black stuff, wears a black banana hammock underneath his Zero costume as depicted in official linearts. As a result, fan art frequently depicts him wearing Black Bra and Panties on the inevitable Gender Bender fanarts. It's Rule 63 of the internet.
• In the penultimate volume of Great Teacher Onizuka, while a nurse is attending Uchiyamada and Onizuka and two of his students are under the bed making bets in which color the nurses panties are, Onizuka is betting purple, one student bets black and the last one bets white, the trope is mentioned. The result is purple with a Garter belt.
• Mahou Sensei Negima references this trope. Koyomi is designed to fit the calm, shy archetype in Fate's team. During her battle with Jack Rakan, using his Super Speed, he tells her after a quick observation that black doesn't suit her.
• Spoofed in an early chapter of the Keroro Gunsou manga, where Keroro rushes into the room with a pair of black panties belonging to Natsumi, saying they're far too racy for a teenager to be wearing. Natsumi promptly kicks him across the room.

[edit] Comic Books

• Although the Lingerie Scene had been around in comics since (at least) the 1930s, black underwear was virtually unseen until the war, and then only in certain kinds of male publications. All this changed during the late 50s, when the British press decided that nice girls could wear black after all.
• A prime example of this changing attitude was Pat Tourret's Tiffany Jones. Essentially a single-girl romance set in Swinging London, the strip featured regular fanservice as the title character modeled the latest in sixties under-fashions (usually accomplished via a perfectly normal domestic activity, such as ironing a dress in her bra and panties). The ongoing stripteases were vaguely surprising, given that the artist and writer were both female. Maybe it was meant to be a proto-feminist statement on the exploitation of women's bodies. Or maybe the Daily Sketch just wanted to sell more papers; who knows?
• Veronica Chase wears this when she "rewards" Deadpool in Merc With A Mouth #9.

[edit] Film

• In both the movie and the comic, Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is shown wearing a black bra and panties.
• Moira McTaggart wears black bra and panties when she infiltrates the Hellfire Club's party in X-Men: First Class.
• As indicated by the page quote, this is Lampshaded in 10 Things I Hate About You when Bianca goes through her sister Kat's drawers and pulls out a pair of black underwear:

  Bianca Stratford: Class schedule, reading list, date book, coffee tickets, um, concert tickets. Ah ha! Black panties!

  Cameron James: What does that tell us?

  Bianca: She wants to have sex some day, that’s what.

  Cameron: (slightly flustered) "She could just like the color...

  Bianca: You don’t buy black lingerie unless you want someone to see it.

  Cameron: What does that mean?

  Bianca: It means she wants to get laid.

• Dick Tracy. Breathless Mahoney wears black underwear to mourn for her ex. And to flirt with Tracy a day later.
• The infamous striptease in True Lies involves black underwear after the character had been told to "dress sexy".
• The villain of Men in Black 2, a shapeshifting alien, chooses a supermodel ad wearing a Black Bra and Panties to imitate and uses it to seduce other characters.
• Used with purpose in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho, where Janet Leigh's character, Marion Crane, starts the film wearing a white bra and slip. When she decides to make off with stolen cash, she changes to a black bra and slip to symbolize her fall from grace. After a discussion with another character, she then goes into a cleansing shower. She doesn't come out under her own power.
• In [[Mannequin}}, there is a quick shot of Emmy (played by Kim Catrall) wearing nothing but these under a white fur coat.
• In Love and Death, Woody Allen's character hooks up with a gorgeous countess -- at the rendezvous, she walks in in very erotic black underthings; Allen deadpans, "I...would have preferred something sexy, but..."
• To demoralize a children's book writer in Closetland, Alan Rickman dresses an unconscious Madeline Stowe in these and wakes her with a blaring repetition of "Women who wear black underwear are closet whores!"
• Angela Hayes wears black panties in American Beauty, probably as part of her effort to seem as sexual and experienced as possible.
• While You Were Sleeping has a slight Level Breaker scene that gets a callback later involving the universal appeal of black underwear. Sandra Bullock's character is feeling vulnerable, and her sleazy Joisey neighbour (who, the script implies, has spent months if not years trying to flirt his way into her pants) shows concern for her. She ends up giving him a hug... to which he says, "Are you wearing a black bra?" She promptly leaves, even as he protests, "I love black underwears!" Later, a knock at the door, which she assumes is him, drives her to storm towards the door shouting several refutations of his crush on her, including "No, I am not wearing black underwear!"... and Bill Pullman's character is at the door. He responds to her comments, including noting that he wouldn't mind seeing her in black underwear, but that he certainly isn't expecting it.
• In Cameron Crowe's Singles, Kyra Sedgwick's character strips down to these prior to having sex with Campbell Scott's character for the first time.
• In Black Swan, virginal and repressed Nina wears white underwear, while sensual and free-spirited Lily wears black.
• In the porno film Nipples, the narrator has a fantasy about two women: one in red lingerie and one in black. His comment is "Woman in red, trouble ahead. Woman in black... trouble ahead".
• Horrible Bosses. Julia deliberately undresses in front of window and then parades around the house in nothing but black bra, panties, suspenders and stockings while Kurt watches in amazement.

[edit] General Animation

• Lois Griffin from the Family Guy episode "Road to Rhode Island.

[edit] Literature

• In Mordechai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Duddy mistakenly comes to the conclusion that a married woman is extremely promiscuous based solely on this trope.
• In the James Patterson novel Sail, it is stated that a lawyer likes it best when his mistress is wearing black underwear.
• Used in a rather questionable leap of logic in the first Inspector Morse novel, in which Morse deduces that:
  1. The murdered girl only had black bras,
  2. She was wearing a white blouse when she was murdered,
  3. Girls would never wear a black bra under a white blouse, so
  4. She wasn't wearing a bra, therefore
  5. She was putting out for sex.
• In the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton, the heroine wears them in the novels Blue Moon (they are a matched set) and Obsidian Butterfly. In the latter work she dons them in two separate instances, when Edward, her male vampire hunting colleague with whom she has a totally platonic relationship brings her a change of clothes to wear after she checks out of hospital stays. In both books the panties are said to be satin. On another occasion, however, Anita (of all people!) actually references the pragmatic reason for wearing black undies in so many words: "Flashing a white bra strap from under a black dress is tacky".
• The Dresden Files. Lara Raith wears this in her first conversation with Harry, because it takes place in a porn studio where she's acting. She later has a gun fight in same outfit. Her Dad lampshades it later on.

[edit] Television

• Mild subversion in Alias when Sydney comes out seductively in sexy black lingerie and is told by her mark to go back and put on 'the red one'. She doesn't take kindly to this.
• Elvira, Mistress of the Dark wears a black bra and panties, complete with black corset.

[edit] ideo Games

• In Mass Effect 2, Miranda Lawson shows the first half of this trope off at the end of the Optional Sexual Encounter.
• In Mass Effect 3 Fem!Shepard is shown in these during the romance scenes. It's not just Fem!Shepard, either. She, Ashley, and Traynor seem to wear identical sets of lacy black lingerie.
• Shizune Hakamichi from Katawa Shoujo. Doubled by how her Panty Shot in Act 1 shows white knickers... yet she wears black and lacy lingerie in her sex scenes.

[edit] Webcomics

• In one Misfile strip boy-turned-girl Ash pairs a black bra with a white t-shirt, her friend Emily (who is a real girl) is quick to point out this trope.
• Jessica is shown to wear them in Loserz. Subverted when we learn later that she's actually a virgin.
• Tsukiko of Order of the Stick is shown to be wearing these under a transparent black negligee during a few Fanservice-y strips; the all-black ensemble suits her Perky Goth style. She's also carrying a Xykon plushie, which she seems to sleep with.

[edit] Troper Tales

• Due to Tropette lacking any comfortable lingerie being available in her favorite color, she would commonly buy spray paint and spray paint her underwear black, just so she wouldn't have to wait for it to come out in a different color with the correct cup size, or have to special order them to be a specific color.
• This troper's girlfriend only owns a black bra, but if she's planning for our dates to end in the sack, she'll whisper in my ear that she's wearing it when we first see each other. The full effect was accomplished, however, when she borrowed a pair of my (black) boxers, and combined them with her aforementioned Black Bra. It's also worth noting that she does own a pair of red panties, which she'll also use as a signal for "in the mood."
• Does it count if the panties are basic cotton and the bra is a sports bra?

• Certainly, as long as they're black.

• This troper was having a laugh with his girlfriend on the sofa playing DS games. She leaned sat in a way that he could see down her shirt, so guess what he saw (by accident, of course)?
• Back in high school, two of tropette's male classmates conducted a survey RE which color underwear was most popular amongst the girls. Rather than conducting interviews or hand out questionnaires, they ate lunch at the bottom of the stairs every day for a year. Two guesses which color won first place.

• And just in case you're wondering - tropette avoided that particular stairwell like the plague.

• This tropette went through a "black underwear" phase during art school. Money being rather scare, she couldn't afford luxury name-brands, so she spent much of her free time touring discount stores, opportunity shops and Asian importers. Strangely enough, delving through the bargain barrel became a fetish in itself after a while, especially when tropette suddenly came across that special pair of black knickers she was looking for (trouble was, such items rarely came in matching sets, so the rest of the day was usually spent hunting down the perfect matching bra).

[edit] Not only but also

• Panty Shot
• I See London
• Innocent Panties
• Lingerie Scene